most biblical.

When Mike and I first got together, I didn’t know much of anything about football. I knew how many points a touchdown is worth, but only because of a lucky guess related to being on the Quiz Bowl team many years ago. Such a nerdy reason should hardly count as football knowledge. And so, for many years, Mike patiently answered my football questions just as I patiently trained him in the importance of college basketball. When he would yell, “FIRST DOWN!” I was always confused, so he finally started saying that they reset the downs. Once at a party, someone overheard him say this to me, and they were horrified by the entire conversation. By the time we watched Friday Night Lights, I could tell, just by watching the plays, what the call should be. I am not sure which one of us was more proud.

Because of my excellent teacher, I feel confident in telling you that we punted this year when it came to the Male Bakeoff. Yes, Mike did win a trophy, and, yes, his dessert was delicious, but this year was different. There were not weeks of anxious planning, and there was a marked lack of intensity at our house. Not to mention the fact that Atticus’s nap is right in the middle of the day, so he and I were late, missing most of the festivities.

I left the photography up to Mike, who didn’t manage to take a single photo of the brownie mosaic cheesecake that he made. He named it Tessera, which is also the name of our early service. The benediction in that service often has to do with us being God’s work of art, and I am told that the word tessera indicates individual tiles used to make a larger mosaic. (It is not to be confused with a term from The Hunger Games.) This blatant pandering worked, and Mike’s Tessera mosaic cheesecake won the Most Biblical award.

This is the third time Mike has won Most Biblical. What I like best about that award is that it acknowledges the silliness of designating things “biblical.” Because, yes, Mike’s Tessera cheesecake was supposed to remind you of Ephesians 2:10, but that doesn’t really make it more biblical than the other desserts. It’s just another way to win a trophy. I’m just glad that the church didn’t retire the Most Biblical category when they had to give it to a Lord of the Rings cake one year for want of other possible entries. Or after The Hill of Foreskins Cheesecake, because . . . what is more biblical than that?

A good time was had by all, Mike’s dessert was wiped clean, and Atticus managed to break his dad’s trophy into three parts before we even got out of the fellowship hall. I super glued it back together once we got home. Perhaps the trophy, like regular human beings, is a bit more beautiful with its cracks and flaws. Perhaps this even makes it more “biblical.”